Space. com now has a short video of Dr. Grotzinger explaining a little about the new discovery with Curiosity. He reports that some of the material in the soil sample was not minerals, but something finely granular, which appears amorphous to the x-ray laser. We know that soil on Earth is made up of minerals, organic materials, water, air, and living things. Of these, only organic matter and living things seem complex enough to appear amorphous to x-rays. link to video: http://www.space.com/18599-what-did-curiosity-find-on-mars-video.html

Charles Elachi, JPL Director, has said in a meeting at La Sapienza University in Rome that Curiosity may have found organic molecules. An official announcement should be made on December 3 at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Tullio
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Thanks, Tullio. if it does turn out to be organic compounds on Mars, it will be interesting to know if these are complex enough to suggest a connection to living things, or if the carbon they contain is dominated by the lighter isotope carbon 12, which is known to be preferentially involved in life processes.

"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

PASADENA, Calif. -- The next news conference about the NASA Mars rover Curiosity will be held at 9 a.m. PST (12 p.m. EST) Monday, Dec. 3, in San Francisco at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect. The news conference will be an update about first use of the rover's full array of analytical instruments to investigate a drift of sandy soil. One class of substances Curiosity is checking for is organic compounds -- carbon-containing chemicals that can be ingredients for life. At this point in the mission, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics.

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has used its full array of instruments to analyze Martian soil for the first time, and found a complex chemistry within the Martian soil. Water and sulfur and chlorine-containing substances, among other ingredients, showed up in samples Curiosity's arm delivered to an analytical laboratory inside the rover.

"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

PASADENA, Calif. -- The next news conference about the NASA Mars rover Curiosity will be held at 9 a.m. PST (12 p.m. EST) Monday, Dec. 3, in San Francisco at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect. The news conference will be an update about first use of the rover's full array of analytical instruments to investigate a drift of sandy soil. One class of substances Curiosity is checking for is organic compounds -- carbon-containing chemicals that can be ingredients for life. At this point in the mission, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics.

Thank you, Julie, for finding and sharing that update. There were a couple of interesting points raised at the science meeting on Curiosity's recent work.
A 4-carbon, chlorine-containing compound was detected but not identified. This could be chlorobutane, chlorobutene, or chlorobutyne. Those are all substantially more complex organic molecules than the chloromethanes, which were identified. I'm not certain that these are so easy to come by, via Earthly or meteoritic contamination of Mars. Will look into this further.
Also interesting were the carbon 12/ carbon 13 ratios. We're told that CO2 (carbon dioxide) on Mars has 4.5% carbon 13, the rest carbon 12. The organic compounds discovered apparently had only 1% carbon 13. This appears to mean an enrichment of carbon 12, the sort of carbon used by living things. A promising-looking result, but not scientifically sufficient to declare the discovery of life on Mars, especially since the 1% figure is close to what would also be expected of Earth contaminants. Further results should prove very interesting.

Er, just a slight question Mr Dull. Why do you choose to still post here if you think Seti is a waste of time?

I Like To Look. Looking Is My Life.

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